Crossfield ES Cell Tower Plan Will Have Public Hearing in September

Updated: The public hearing has been moved to Sept. 28 (it was originally reported to be Sept. 15

The plan to build a cell phone tower disguised as a tree at Crossfield Elementary School in Oak Hill will go before the Fairfax County Planning Commission in September.

Verizon Wireless is seeking to build the tower at the Fairfax County Public Schools’ elementary school at 2791 Fox Mill Rd. on the Reston/Oak Hill line in order to improve cell phone coverage in the area.

Verizon is working with local firm Milestone Communications to get approval to build the 138-foot tower and improve cell phone reception in the area.

The request to build the pole comes about three years after a similar proposal fell apart in the application process. T-Mobile and Milestone filed an application in November of 2013 seeking to build at Crossfield. The request was postponed indefinitely.

There is organized opposition to the construction, just as there was in 2013. A group of residents has organized an online petition.

The cell tower proposed for Crossfield Elementary is not needed — a ‘significant gap in coverage’ does not exist in this area, as defined by Federal requirements. Eighty-two (82) towers are active within a 4-mile radius of the site – and the poor cell reception within the school and in nearby homes can be fixed with inexpensive signal boosters.

Cell towers near elementary schools concern home shoppers enough to lower property values, and they are an eyesore even when disguised as “trees.”

In addition, there is enough scientific uncertainty about the health risk cellular radiation poses to small children that we must protect these kids rather than ignore the evidence and be sorry later. This school has 3- and 4-year-old preschoolers who could be exposed daily to this radiation for nine years. No studies to date have been done on children to measure the effect of long-term exposure to non-ionizing radiation (the type emitted by cellular towers).

The World Health Organization cautions to avoid exposure to non-ionizing radiation as a cancer prevention strategy. We must be proactive in protecting our families, financially and physically, by eliminating this unnecessary risk.

Find a different place to put this tower! We, the local residents and school parents, DO NOT want it.

The neighbors have also sent letters to school and county officials.

There was also a proposal by AT&T and Milestone for a pole at Hunters Woods Park, a Reston Association property, in June of 2014. The RA Design Review Board nixed the ideaof a 115-foot pole in the woods behind a soccer field.

But many poles have been built on to public lands in recent years. South Lakes High School, Herndon Middle School, Madison High School and Carson Middle School are among the many FCPS properties that have cell phone towers on their grounds.

The cell phone companies pay the landowners to lease the pole space. FCPS, for instance, has made more than $4 million from the arrangement over the last several years, FCPS officials said.

Milestone collects rent from the wireless carriers on its towers, 40 percent of which goes to FCPS. Schools receive $25,000 each time a tower is built, and then $5,000 from each wireless carrier that leases space on the tower.

Milestone says schools and parks are ideal locations for these towers because they often have existing structures, such as field light poles, in place.

Why aren’t they honest enough to just say they don’t like the way the cell phone tower looks? This has been researched over and over. Non-ionizing radiation is harmless. The harmful kind is ionizing radiation. You know..the kind that strips electrons from their valence shells? If radiation is generally harmful, you might as well ban the Sun. They are using bogus health claims because it gives the best chance to block something that they really want to block because they think it’s an eyesore.

Jon Taylor

There are people who don’t like the way it looks, as well as uninformed people who are actually concerned about radiation. See the comments in the petition linked. Probably the same group of people who think vaccines cause autism.

Exactly. It’s called “non-ionizing” for a reason. Moreover, there are several very high voltage power line systems running right through Reston with at least two major power substations along the lines. They predate Reston, and we don’t see Restonians and visitors suffering any more or less cancer (or anything else) from these lines.

Evey Hammond

Check out the troll who just condemned me to hell…

Greg

Well, it surely is a very bad facsimile of a tree. Certainly in these days and times, Verizon can do better.

As to health issues:

Exposure to ionizing radiation, such as from x-rays, is known to increase the risk of cancer. However, although many studies have examined the potential health effects of non-ionizing radiation from radar, microwave ovens, cell phones, and other sources, there is currently no consistent evidence that non-ionizing radiation increases cancer risk.

We have some concern trolls in the forum claiming things such as a cell phone tower causing lupus. Take a look.

Greg

Yes, we do. And their claims are baseless at best. Have they revealed their sources and “thousands of papers”? Have they revealed even one?

Evey Hammond

One of our trolls has just condemned me to hell for challenging him. No capacity for reason.

Sylvan Moir

I will tell you what happens: many thousands of papers are done showing harm, some horrifying. The powers that be . The ICNIRP, the regulatory bodies – all turn a blind eye to these studies , or industry-tied groups “replicate ” the study – beng careful NOT to reporduce the harmful effect.
Then the beurocratic/legal/political experts get to work with their wordmithery of professional dissimulation, at which they are masters. (That is how you get the causuistical formulation in the comment below –
viz. : “there is currently no consistent evidence that non-ionizing radiation increases cancer risk”.
The official bodies and the medical establishment have strong motives to keep pushing the line of the harmlessness of microwave radiation – in the billions they get in tax, by being infiltrated by the telecom industry (the ICNIRP for instance, is comprised entirely of people either tied to the industry or the military) . Then the knock out blow is that they have millions of useful idiots among the general population who love their wireless and microwave devices and wont be parted from them for anything.

Evey Hammond

What thousands? Cite them. Who, exactly are the “independent researchers”? Name them.

Sylvan Moir

You cite them. If you can’t find them – you have no good faith and are just a troll.

Guest

Sylvan, it is your claim to fact. You are obligated to produce a citation. Then anyone can respond with criticism and research in opposition. If you say there are thousands of papers but can’t cite any of them, your claim is invalid.

Sylvan Moir

Your denying it is your “claim” to fact . Since they are so prolific this is true. You are a troll – lacking in good faith and humanity – the scourge of the planet at this time.
Are you seriously going to tell me, for instance, that you have never heard of the bioinitiative report? And are you going now to tell us that that report is discredited and worthless?
Why then hold such information in abeyance , until I mention some of the thousands of papers that you no doubt are fully aware exist? Why not say right off -“Yes, there are thousand of negative papers, it just so happens that all of them are wrong”.
This is your line – right? Or are you going to deny that too?
Obviously you do not say the above because you are lacking in the good faith to consider things openly and honestly and know full well that such a statement lacks credibility – so you engage in this charade which all you trolls do again and again with sickening, completely troll-like and inhuman regularity, of asking for an authority, a paper, then proceeding to sneer at the same .
Anyone with an open heart, and good faith can easily see that the thousands of papers showing harm from this radiation have already scotched for all time the proposition (on which the industry proceeds and roll-outs proceed) that this technology is essentially safe.
If you wish to assert otherwise we know what to think.

Sylvan Moir

I might add that it is for YOU to prove safety anyway, before radically changing the condition of the earths’entire biosphere- very obviously, for anyone with good faith. Even your rationality is a sham.

Scott H

You are completely wrong Sylvan. If everything had to be proven safe, you literally could not do anything.
You can not “prove safety” for crossing the street, riding a bike, driving a car, watching TV, or typing on a computer.
The FDA does not require that a drug is proved safe. It requires that there is no evidence of substantial harm that outweighs the benefits. If they had to “prove safety” then you could never have an drug that was “FDA approved” be removed from the market for being found unsafe. So basically, every FDA drug is “thought to be safe” until it isn’t.
You and your kids are bombarded with Radiation every second of every day. If you believe what you have typed, then the rational course of action would be for you to wrap yourself and your children in a lead bunker and never come out…of course, don’t lick the lead. It has not been been proven safe either.

Sylvan Moir

Just a detail I suppose that all our governments , plus all the regulatory bodies go on and on about how yes they ARE following the precautionary principle. This says, if it says anything at all, that it is up to the one bringing the change- YOU_ to prove safety , not up to the objectors to prove anything at all .
In this case, in the microwave band- the levels are being elevated above natural background levels all life evolved in over billions of years – thousands of billions of times. You so-called rationalists are so stupid: all you ever do is cite irrelevant facts, twist what is happening to suit your conclusions.
We live on a planet called earth . You may have heard of it . It is a place where the human ihabitants discovered at a certain point that their technology , over and over and over again – was causing horrific harm to the biology and ecology of their planet . One thing they did therefore was to initiate a new pricniple – they called the precautionary principle – which was designed to abate the somewhat blinkered over-enthusiasm of some of its more science or technology-minded types , in order to stop more absolute ecological disasters being caused by runaway science. They no doubt failed so far as you are concerned.

Sylvan Moir

What you cite about drugs is – interestingly- one of the main things wrong with the whole of conventional medicine

Tammi Petrine

I believe the cell towers are not the only structures required. EACH lessee to the tower has an 8′ High ‘shed’ to hold switching equipment that can be quite large: 8′ X 12′ perhaps or more. Is the school aware of these accompanying buildings? These buildings must be accessible by truck so good luck with maintaining the environment around them. Nothing is as simple as it first appears.

Guest

I’ll bite, in case you’re under-informed and not just concern trolling. This site has been considered since 2013, including environmental studies. There is asphalt less than a hundred feet away. FCPS gathers revenue from cell towers hosted on many of their properties.

And they are aware of the ‘shed’.

Chuck Morningwood

As I’ve said before, why put this on the low ground of Crossfield Elementary when there’s already Tel Co property on the rise to the south of Crossfield?

Evey Hammond

Maybe FCPS pushed for it as revenue. When the FY2017 budget was adopted, they couldn’t quite close a $50 million deficit. The neighbors at the site you mentioned could also mount a NIMBY charge and try to deny the use of that property, too. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

C Kuhlmann

7 elderly people in 7 months have died due to the RF, EMF and Microwave radiation effects on a senior population that are at risk and who have no idea of the health effects on the human body. cell tower base station that looks like a fake tree, Oakley CA. SBA Communications and the City of Oakley have ignored my concerns regarding the health of the rest of the senior community and my own health effects from living at the base of the cell phone tower for 2 years I believe that cell phone tower has been at this location for five years or so.
Elder abuse keeps popping into my head and how cities have a zero tolerance for elder abuse yet they completely ignore the health and safety the residents if this senior Mobile Home Park
I got my AA in electronics at Heald College of Technology in Martinez and I have worked various Environmental engineering and Laboratory firms.
I believe that the death toll will only increase because nobody wants 2 recognize the truth of the matter regarding cell phone tower radiation effects on living cells.
What do I do

RadRosie

my grand daughter developed childhood Lupus after a cell tower was placed next to her elementary school. A cell tower was placed next to my home and I have suffered severe Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity. I have shielded my home but my yard has so much radiation I can not enjoy being outside at all. Non Ionizing radiation has been the subject of thousands of independent studies showing biological harm.

Evey Hammond

What thousands? Cite them.

Sylvan Moir

You should be careful Evey, very careful : destroying young lives through lies is going to come with a very high price tag.
I would encourage anybody who reads this to read my other comments, then do a search for papers demonstrating harm from mobile’ phones, towers, wifi etc.
You Evey I would just remind, for whatever evil twisted purpose you want to continue disseminating lies,they might not be worth where lies of this calibre will take you . You will end up with “The Prince of Lies”, the one who was indeed “a liar from the beginning” – because this is his territory – and that is what you are plumbing for . You might not find it easy to escape.

Evey Hammond

Ad hominem attack means you lose.

Scott H

When you cannot win an argument, attack your opponent. That is the SOP of emotion-based people (also Liberals).

Evey Hammond

Liberals and conservatives are often emotion based. Both groups run the gamut, and neither has a monopoly on reason or emotion. Take everyone on a case by case basis.

Greg

How about citing one?

Evey Hammond

RadRosie, you are the one making a claim to fact. The burden of proof is on you.

Guest

Hi RadRosie, I notice in another comment you direct readers to the 2012 BioInitiative Report. I think this might be one of the “thousands” of sources you claim supports the stated cause of your child’s and your condition.

However, a brief search shows that the BIR is not a scientific publication, but a non peer reviewed set of papers providing a selective interpretation of existing research.

I know Rosie. I got a cold after I moved near a cell tower. The evidence is overwhelming!

Sylvan Moir

(See my other comments)
Just a small collection showing why it is certain that microwaves are probably extremely dangerous and why the assumption that they are essentially safe has already been scotched for all time.
This is written for people with open hearts and minds obviously not for sneering trolls like Evey and their ilk, who only sneer and lie.https://www.emfanalysis.com/research/

Oakley Cell Tower

Approx six years is how long it took for a dozen people to get sick and die in a Seniors only Big Oak Mobile Home Park in Oakley CA. All in the Transmission Path of a T-Mobile and Verizon Stealth Pine Tree Cell Tower Base Station owned by SBA Communications. 200 West Cypress Rd, Oakley CA. FCC Reg. No. 1275551.
Low income and an At-Risk population. Its Murder in slow motion. These innocent people dont deserve to suffer. They are getting 24 seven exposure here. FCC has lost my confidence by the way they are handling non ionizing radiation. What do you mean that we are not allowed to bring up negative health effects durring the approval process? THATS NUTS! WHO IS RUNNING THIS TURD HUNT?https://plus.google.com/collection/Q6W5jB